Spring Grove museum displays horse gas mask and more

If there’s a better done community-level museum in York County than Spring Grove’s, it would be interesting to see it. (This doesn’t count the county-wide York County Heritage Trust.)
Museum curators display all sorts of things, even have a gas mask for a horse, circa World War II.
The Spring Grove Area Historical Preservation Society has divided its 7,300 artifacts into three rooms with schools, community and heritage themes.
Here are several items on display in this 3,000-square-foot, all volunteer museum: …

— A scale model of Berkheimer’s one-room country school, formerly at Lischey’s Church Road in North Codorus Township.
— Hanoverian Jacob Hostetter’s tall case clock, measuring time in 30 hours.
— A weaver organ, used in Spring Grove schools, and a Weaver player piano, both made in York.
— A machine gun deployed in the tower of the Spring Grove school to protect the borough during World War I.
Sadly or happily, one artifact not on exhibit is a 77-mm field piece located near Spring Grove’s American Legion Post in 1927 as a memorial to residents who served in World War I. Residents felt it appropriate to donate the cannon to be melted down for armament metal during World War II.
The museum — open 9 a.m.-11:30 a.m. Thursdays and 1 p.m.-4 p.m. on the second and fourth Sundays — is one of York County’s many unsung locales. http://www.springgroveboro.com/history.htm
For a list of unsung county artifacts or locations, search for posts under York Town Square archives:
— The Little Courthouse
— Prospect Hill Cemetery
— War Mothers Memorial
— Work War II USO at former York County Academy gymnasium
— York’s Salem Square soldiers monument
— York’s Cookes House
— York’s rowhouses
— Wrightsville’s monuments
— The Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge
— Memorial trees along highways Route 30 & Susquehanna Trail.
— The Inches
— Camp Stewartstown
— The Wrightsville Bridge supports
— New York Wire Co.’s factory whistle
— Mary Ann Furnace
— York’s Hartman Building
— Hanover’s Iron Mike and The Picket
— York’s Eberts Lane
— Helen Reeves Thackston Memorial Park
— WW II defense worker housing
— Shiloh’s former town square
— Loucks one-room school
— Red Lion’s Fairmount Park
— Carlisle Avenue Market House
— York’s Fairmount Neighborhood
— Ma & Pa Railroad, Muddy Creek Forks draw fans
— Delta’s slate clock and Mainline Museum

About Jim McClure

Editor of the York Daily Record/Sunday News, ydr.com and its many digital products. Journalism/history blogger: yorktownsquare.com. Author or co-author of seven York County, Pa., history books.

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About York Town Square

Welcome to York Town Square, 9 years of daily posts about history/journalism, topics that can easily become plodding and self important. My goal is to keep this blog fun and accessible. And I try to say something in each post. I welcome your comments and respond to every one you write. Please contact me at jem@ydr.com.